On the night he died, his family cleaned his body, dressed him in his favourite outfit and laid him in his bed. His wife crawled in and fell asleep beside him. The next morning would see the start of a four-day celebration of life that included visits from friends and relatives, a circle of remembrance and a ceremony to send off a man loved by many in his 63 years of life.

In days gone by, this is the way we said goodbye. Life’s final passage was intimate, personal and observed by our nearest and dearest.

The event described above, however, happened just a few months ago. Working with the man before his death and his large extended family throughout, native Calgarian Sarah Kerr ensured that his parting was recognized with rituals that were healing for all involved.

“I don’t see life and death as opposites; life encompasses both,” says the woman who goes by the job title of death midwife. “I see what I’m doing as community therapy.”

While death midwifery is in fact an ancient practice, it has only been in the last decade that it has resurfaced in mainstream North American society. While their approaches can vary, death midwives — some call themselves death doulas or spiritual midwives — offer families an alternative to the usual funeral home send-off. It’s an unfamiliar term that “everybody’s defining differently,” says Kerr, who keeps in touch with fellow practitioners through the Facebook group Death Midwifery in Canada and services clients through her business Soul Passages (soulpassages.ca).

One thing’s for sure: thanks to the Baby Boomers, the first wave having turned 65 in 2011, the popularity of such an alternative is on the upswing.

“They did home births, home-schooling,” says Kerr of the generation that changed the cultural landscape.

Thursday at 7 p.m., Kerr is hosting a Family-Led After Death Care film screening and presentation at Wickenden Hall (1703 1st St. N.W., tickets $14 at the door), during which she will share both her philosophy of death midwifery and its practical implications.

Kerr’s alternative approach to dying is in keeping with the pioneering approach she’s taken most of her life. In her early 20s, the eldest of two daughters of Sheila and Bill Kerr, a Calgary geologist, was a vocal advocate for the environment.

“I became passionate about it while working as a back-country guide,” she says. “I realized I had to move back to the city in order to help make any change.”

By the late 1990s, she was a prominent figure in the peaceful protest movement, a commitment that found her in a Seattle jail for five days during World Trade Organization protests.

“I went in one person and came out another,” she says of the transformative experience of sharing a three-by-five metre cell with 35 other women, along with being among 600 protesters who refused to leave until all were released. “Like any kind of initiating experience. something hard can be a great gift to make you realize what you’re capable of.”

After more than a decade as a social and community activist, she recently received her PhD from the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco.

“After graduating, I spent a long time thinking about where I wanted to put my energy next,” says Kerr, who has also worked as an instructor in the University of Calgary’s environmental design faculty. “Eventually I came to working with death because I think it’s one of the deepest cultural shadows we have.”

Kerr’s mostly word of mouth clientele come to her with a wide variety of requests, from helping those facing imminent death with creating their own rituals to those looking for a way to formally say goodbye to a beloved pet.

While she is passionate about her work in helping families say goodbye in their own unique way, Kerr says is quick to point out that for some, the traditional mode works just fine.

“This isn’t for everybody,” she says. “I just tell them these are the options, with a lot of respect for funeral homes and what they do.”

Aiding those who seek a different way to acknowledge death, though, has become the passion of her life.

“If I can help people have a more comfortable relationship with death, she says, “it’ll not only be a service at a personal level but it’ll have an impact culturally, too.”

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